THE TWENTY-FIRST PAGE

Everything commonly needed for a life in books can be learned in a bookstore. It’s a kind of graduate school for the greedy reader. A library doesn’t serve quite the same purpose because you’ve got to return the books.

The saddest lesson learned is that many of the folks involved in the making of books don’t read them. Along the way someone must do so. Therefore, publishers bring in total strangers to minister to their “products.”

The ranks of US professional readers are filled with dropins and dropouts from trade publications, who review books before publication; book club people, who evaluate choices for the clubs; movie and television readers, who provide “coverage”; those who freelance on behalf of paperback selections, and those who are first readers for original publication. They’re a brave lot often identified by the thickness of their glasses and a pallid complexion not often found in nature. It was easy for me to join the ranks as I already had the thick glasses.

I didn’t realize one could actually be paid for reading manuscripts. I was learning the many ways of the big city.

The bookstore days were over.